Jump to content
TSM Forums

godthedog

Members
  • Content count

    2090
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by godthedog

  1. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    if obama is elected & doesn't use his position to take real action on the race problems he's addressed, then he remains an empty symbol. this-- also has a chance of backfiring in obama's face as a mistrust of black elected officials who try to "pass." if he gets votes as a member of the black community, then does nothing to uplift that community, then he just becomes a token. then after the "anything is possible" party is over, that community has a right to start asking him, "so what have you ever done for us other than be black?" celebration of how far we've come and all is fine, but it's certainly not a substitute for policy, and there's a big danger of that celebration becoming an excuse for taking no further action--as if to say, "look how good we white people are, we put a black man in the white house! we don't need to do anything else now!"
  2. godthedog

    Pundits you love/hate

    *edit* dammit to be fair, a sizable number of democrats on this board and others do like marney. but most would never admit it.
  3. godthedog

    Pundits you love/hate

    ^it doesn't work like that. the legacy candidate, who starts out with WAY more name value, political connections, and momentum does not somehow magically become the "underdog" in the middle of the contest when the other candidate finds a way to win more votes without banking on any of those things. when the superstar-loaded 2004 lakers faced off against the pistons in the finals, nobody started calling them the "underdogs" when they were down 3 games to 1. her status as an "underdog" is a fiction written by hillary's campaign to de-emphasize her weaknesses as "challenges" and her ability to barely keep up with what she was supposed to be doing anyway as "overcoming adversity." biggest example: the PA primary when she said "he outspent me three-to-one, but i still managed to win by double digits!" as if she's railing against the dreaded *OBAMA MONEY MACHINE* to hide the fact that she, with decades of well-oiled financing connections, should've been raising far more money than him anyway. obama won on a better message and a better-run campaign. period. he did it without attempting to game the contest to his advantage by overemphasizing the role of superdelegates, without trying to divorce the concept of "electability" from the concept of "person whom the will of the voters favors in the primary," without claiming the other party's candidate might make a better president, without trying to call into question the whole legitimacy of the party's primary process (like not counting the iowa caucus), and without trying to use "the will of the disqualified voters" to his own political advantage, ALL of which hillary did at one point or another in the primary.
  4. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama...ooking_off_into
  5. godthedog

    Pundits you love/hate

    an analogy to what she's doing here-- random obama supporter: look at how blue this poster is. ann coulter: that shows how much you know, you stupid shit! how can you even say that the poster is blue when it's the light rays it reflects at a certain frequency on the spectrum that stimulate certain optic nerves which gradually build to an impression of "blue" in your brain! how can you even have the balls to open your mouth about colors when you have no clue how optics works? it's the light that's "blue," not the poster! as a matter of fact, the light as such has no color, there's nothing like "blue" until it's processed in your brain, before that it's just a light frequency! you have no right whatsoever to refer to that poster as actually being blue! this is a well-known phenomenon of "pointing out a supposed difference that makes no real difference in the matter at hand," or "missing the point." by pointing out an additional formal or mechanical matter in the process, she tries to argue that the beginning has nothing to do with the end result. wittgenstein would say that she is trying to answer one language-game with another.
  6. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft Thread

    i'm fond of that sublime album in a summery way too. it's the only cd i can think of to have a swimming party to that isn't west coast rap. dude was a good songwriter.
  7. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    motherfuckers be havin' lives and shit. Rear Window can't go without a hitchcock, and can't have a better hitchcock than this one. simple, lean, and elegant. grace kelly's entrance is the stuff dreams are made of. ray
  8. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    haven't you been paying attention? she's still in the race! she hasn't conceded! there's still hope!
  9. godthedog

    Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

    it really says a lot for the movie that most of the positive comments are based on things that reminded them of the other movies.
  10. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    i knew somebody was going to do this. i also like the second much better than the first--the first lives or dies on how good the battle scene is at the moment, and it's really uneven. there's also no point whatsoever to the mixed-up chronology. this is neither here nor there, but i don't think this duo on the whole has aged very well at all. you can hear tarantino smirking to himself under all the dialogue, which is funny the first time but isn't very memorable. are you kidding? this is way better than the sequel. fucking thick with all sorts of menacing atmosphere, and you really feel the coldness of space.
  11. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    i expected 'lebowski' to be gone way before 'fargo'.
  12. godthedog

    2008 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics

    "very very good but not great" team is about where i'd put them.
  13. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    Touch of Evil my absolute favorite movie of my absolute favorite director. i've been in love with this movie since i was 12 or 13 years old, watching the copy that i taped from AMC over and over again. just an incredible piece of work that showed how scary good orson welles could be with a steady budget and an american crew. i prefer this one to 'kane' because it doesn't try so hard to be great--it's got a gritty, pulpy humility to it that gets the "kiss kiss bang bang" appeal of american cinema in perfect harmony with the more ambitious and baroque sense of art cinema that welles helped give rise to. the great in-studio visuals that welles got on 'kane' often lead to lots of people not noticing that he was one of the best on-location guys there was. from the opening tracking shot to the john ford-like barren wasteland around the mirador motel, to the oil derricks and the bridge of the finale...the whole thing is thick with dusty, sweaty, claustrophobic atmosphere.
  14. godthedog

    Nick Hogan

    now you're just being kind of argumentative and dumb, like the bible is some sort of salad bar where you can just put the croutons and sunflower seeds in a bowl and still call it a salad. it would be a very strange thing to be a christian who didn't believe in the sermon on the mount (from which that passage comes). there's christians who don't believe in what st. paul said about homosexuality, there's christians who don't believe that a woman is unclean while she's on her period. but i've yet to run into anyone who says, "yeah, i think what jesus said in the sermon on the mount just isn't right, and doesn't apply." the teachings of christ sort of tend to form a central part of the christian faith. so yes, their religious beliefs you're referring to would need to at least partly consist of that passage. my point was to show the inconsistency and disingenuousness of such a "belief."
  15. godthedog

    Guess that poster...

    this was me.
  16. godthedog

    Nick Hogan

    "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." --Matthew 5:44-5 in this case, you certainly can. just saying.
  17. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    not only that, but MCCAIN HATES WOMEN. HE HATES THEM LIKE THE STENCH OF DEATH. how do you make a statement about sexism in the political process by voting for the man who hates women? this is one area where geraldine ferraro has a chance to make a huge difference, and for whatever reason she just has not talked about it at all. it wouldn't even involve much changing of her tune, you just say something like: "if there were frequent rumors of mccain demeaning or mistreating blacks, do you think he'd be allowed anywhere near the nomination? of course not. but since it's women, they're just 'unconfirmed rumors' that don't need to be discussed. what does it say about the political culture when rumors of racism are so damning and rumors of sexism go nowhere?" that, to my mind, is a very real problem of double standards that can (and should) be discussed, in a way that doesn't need to undercut the democratic party. so, why does ferraro only focus on obama and not mccain? the answer is clear: she hates black people.
  18. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    well, you can disagree with a candidate's policies while still believing they would make a better president, and vice versa. in clinton's case, there's a pretty big divide between the "policies" and the "whatnot"--in this situation, the "whatnot" meaning "how the person will act executively in novel or crisis situations." also: there was absolutely no reason for any outside spectators to be in the room where that meeting was taking place. none. since they couldn't ask questions, the only way they could participate was by cheering, booing, and generally being disruptive to the process. when you invite people into the room who are already riled up to bus across the country for it, you're asking for chaos. (i say this of the obama supporters as well as the clinton ones.) you just can't put them in there and expect them to quietly watch. if he couldn't justify it by "playing to the crowd," there was no way ickes would've opened his mouth to make as many dumb questions or comments as he ended up doing. i half-expected carl levin to walk over and hit him over the head. if people want to know what's going on, let them watch it on tv.
  19. godthedog

    2008 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics

    well, phil jackson is smarter than flip saunders. and kobe's much scarier in close game situations than anybody on the pistons.
  20. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    i hate you.
  21. godthedog

    Campaign 2008

    i watched about an hour of it. mark brewer is a smart guy, who spoke very well. harold ickes is scum.
  22. godthedog

    2008 NBA Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics

    the better-coached team will win. doc rivers is way out of his league here.
  23. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    i thought about picking 'the wild bunch' just to be a dickhead. i also thought about picking 'eyes without a face' for the same reason.
  24. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft: Movie Edition

    The Godfather i wanted to swipe this up before anyone else got the chance to, and i'm frankly amazed that it made it to me. pitch-perfect moviemaking, every decision made exactly right in exactly the right place. michael corleone's character arc is the stuff dreams are made of, and he never steals focus from any of the other terrifically-drawn characters. great scene after great scene--my favorite is when tom has to tell vito that sonny's dead. everything great about the early 70s more or less belonged to this movie.
  25. godthedog

    Desert Island Draft Thread

    that's astounding that only one r.e.m. album (and not even their best one by a long shot) has been picked.
×